Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner split…Yeah, I saw that one coming.

As a social studies teacher, students will often ask me to predict what I believe will happen regarding many of the troubling current events in our world. Sometimes I’ll try to make an “educated” guess. Often I’ll remind them that my area of expertise is the past not the future. Sometimes I’ll impart some of my father’s wisdom. When my mother would get a little ahead of herself in planing, my father would respond with one of his two favorite expressions:

“Janet, first we have to live that long.”

“First we’ll see, then we’ll know.

Being able to predict the future has created an entire industry known as “Palm Reading”. It’s a skill possessed by very few outside the carnival industry. (You Tube)

I feel confident saying that most of us fancy ourselves as having the ability to see into the future. We all love to make predictions, and we love to claim credit when we are proven correct. “See, I told you Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner wouldn’t last. He’s got that wandering eye!” However, very few people wish to lay claim to their failed prognostications. There is a word for people like that. They are called “radio sports talk-show hosts”. Actually, all media outlets that are in the business of telling you who’s going to win are wrong almost all of the time, but they rarely acknowledge their blunders.

It’s funny, I don’t recall “Sports Illustrated” picking the Royals to get to the World Series last year, despite now celebrating their greatness. This year, “SI” picked the Indians to win it all. The “Tribe” is currently far below the .500 threshold as of this posting, so perhaps “Sports Illustrated” should stick to reporting on what was as opposed to what will be? (Getty Images)

Perhaps the most famous sports prognosticator of all time was the king of odds-making, and the occasional racist observation, one Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder. For those of you too young to remember, Jimmy “The Greek” used to set odds for sports gambling, (An industry built solely for entertainment purposes only) and eventually parlayed this “talent” into a gig on the CBS football pre-game show, “The NFL Today”, which aired in the 1970s and ’80s. Jimmy “The Greek” would lay odds on the outcome of the games on Sundays, and had quite a large following until he observed in an interview that African-Americans were superior athletes to whites because they were bred that way during slavery. Unlike Sports Illustrated, Jimmy “The Greek” was better served predicting the future rather than discussing the past.

(Jimmy “The Greek” lost his job over these comments. It is interesting to note for those who think we are more sensitive than we used to be. This was 27 years ago!) (You Tube)

The political arena has become another area where people make predictions, only to be proven wrong almost all of the time. In fact, predicting political races has become a “cottage industry” on to itself. In 2012, when many people were predicting a close race between President Obama and Governor Mitt Romney, one political website under the direction of an “uber-nerd named Nate Silver, nailed the results far more accurately than any of the other so-called experts. Silver’s website “fivethirtyeight.com”, proved to be exceptionally accurate when it came to calling the outcome of the 2012 election, as well as the interim results of 2014. In 2012, Silver accurately predicted all 50 states in the race between Obama and Romney, and it would have served Romney to pay more attention to Silver. Romney was so certain that he was going to win, he didn’t even write a concession speech.

You might want to stop shoving those nerds into their gym lockers, they know stuff! (New York Times)

There have been many predictions made regarding Obama’s presidency. Many predicted that “Obama Care” would wreck the economy, but that hasn’t happened yet. Eventually the economy will suffer, and so I guess people can blame “Obama Care”, but they’ll have to prove cause and effect. Now people are predicting that the agreement with Iran to end sanctions in exchange for the Iranian’s pledge to give up building a nuclear bomb will lead to the destruction of Israel and world war. We will most definitely find out whether those who are predicting doom over this agreement were right. However if they turn out to have been wrong in 10 years, will they admit it? If they are right, will anybody be left to say, “I told you so”? Doo doo doo doo, Doo doo doo doo…

(Time will tell.) (You Tube)

Predicting what will happen in sports or politics seems like a bit of a crap-shoot. In business, most successful people seem to have an inkling for what people will want or need. Steve Jobs excelled at this, and had the bank account to prove it. Predicting trends appears to be where the businessman often trumps the inventor. The Rockefeller’s and Carnegie’s, and Ford’s, weren’t inventors per se’, but they understood business and/or consumer trends, and knew how to get ahead of that curve. (Although the means they employed to get there might not be in a fairness sense…kosher?) Predicting the next big thing in business can often be the difference between as they used to say in the game of “Life”, “Millionaire Acres” vs. “The Poor House”.

There are many who maintain that “New Coke” was the worst predictor of consumer trends in American business history. Some have even suggested that Coca-Cola knew it was going to fail, and saw it as an opportunity to re-energize so-called “Classic Coke” against the growing threat from Pepsi. Either way, at least Coca-Cola knew that their chosen spokesperson was a man of excellent character that people would always trust. (You Tube)

Many people believe very strongly in the extra-sensory ability of those chosen few to predict the future. For example, many people believed that the Mayan calendar had provided us with a telescope into the future by predicting that the world would end in 2012. (Obama’s re-election probably made it feel that way for some, heh, heh) However, for those who seek guidance into what the future will bring, one does not need to consult a Mayan calendar. In fact, right here in New York State, there’s an entire town dedicated to guiding you spiritually towards the future. The town I speak of can be found in Western New York, and it is known as Lily Dale.

Apparently, black cats just fall out of the trees on to your shoulders in Lily Dale. Just my luck, I’m allergic to cats. (You Tube)

Lily Dale is a place where you can go and have your future told for a tidy fee. Lily Dale is approximately an hour southwest of Buffalo, and its inhabitants number less than 300. However, over 22,000 people come to Lily Dale each year in order to explore the concept of “Spiritualism”. If they are willing to pay, and are brave enough to take the chance, they can meet privately with a “medium”. (I probably would need a XX-Large, but I digress.)

Some great stories have come out of Lily Dale. My favorite is the one where a person was told by a “medium” that they couldn’t tell them their future. Frustrated, the person left, and then died in a car crash on the way home. It would appear the person had no future to predict.

If Lily Dale seems too remote, don’t fret, you can always have your future predicted, along with an order of chicken chow mein. Just order in some Chinese food, and you get a free bit of wisdom, guidance, good lottery numbers, and a window into upcoming events, via the “Fortune Cookie”. Just remember to order without MSG, or I predict you’ll come down with a case of “Lock-Jaw”.

What of my own powers of soothsaying you ask? Well, in sports anyway, I have proven to be disturbingly poor at predicting almost anything. Every week, I wager on NFL Football games, (For recreational purposes only) and always lose. Sometimes I don’t even get any of my recreational bets correct. I should just bet against the Jets and Giants, that would probably at least give me a fighting chance.

As for my other predictions:

I was right about compact discs. I said they wouldn’t last, but I said it was because they were too expensive. Instead, it was the iPod.

I thought the band “Big Country” would be huge. They were a one-hit wonder.

I predicted that the Berlin Wall wouldn’t fall in my lifetime. Students will often ask me, what are some things that you don’t think you’ll ever see? I would always say that Communism and the Berlin Wall would always be around, (Wrong!), that there would never be peace in Northern, Ireland, (Sort of wrong) and there would never be peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. (So far, that seems like a pretty safe bet.)

I always told students when they asked me if we would have a female president or an African-American president first, I always said, “A female president for sure, after all, 80 nations have already had female leaders, I’m sure you’ll see that here as well.”

Look you can’t be right all of the time. In my defense, 50% of the time, I’m right, all the time. Now, I will leave you with “The Beatles of the 1980s”. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for….BIG COUNTRY!

(The band is riding 4×4’s in their video, they have big hair with lots of gel, they’re playing some sort of weird sounding instruments, these guys can’t miss!) (You Tube)